Anyone who travels regularly through Pozzuoli or Naples will spot them at almost every set of traffic lights: cars and scooters bearing Polish number plates. There are tens of thousands of them by now. For a long time, the question arose whether so many Polish nationals had actually moved to the region, given how frequently the PL plate appeared on motorini and small cars. The answer has nothing to do with migration, but a great deal to do with one of the most significant Italian-Polish economic phenomena of recent years.
What really lies behind the number plates
According to the latest figures from the Italian Automobile Club ACI, which the Italian news portal Il Post summarised in a detailed report, there are now 68,228 vehicles registered in Poland on Italian roads, of which 37,830 are cars and 29,120 are motorcycles. The vast majority are concentrated in the greater Naples area. In 2025 alone, 14,066 Polish number plates were newly entered into the Italian register for foreign vehicles (REVE) in the province of Naples.
The background is straightforward from an economic standpoint. Compulsory motor liability insurance, known in Italy as RC Auto , costs an average of 569 euros per year in Naples according to the latest figures from the Italian insurance supervisory authority IVASS, compared with an Italian national average of 437 euros and a minimum of 317 euros in Potenza. A comparable policy in Poland, by contrast, costs between 600 and 800 euros in the first year, but falls to around 350 euros from the second year onwards. Over the long term, the Polish option is therefore considerably cheaper, particularly for high-premium zones such as Naples or Rome.
The trick, step by step
The practice, which in Poland has long been known as proceder włoski ("the Italian method") or przekręt neapolski ("the Naples trick"), follows a well-established pattern. The vehicle is first deregistered from the Italian public motor vehicle register, the PRA. A Polish company takes formal ownership, registers the vehicle in Poland and takes out liability insurance there. The car or scooter is then returned to the original Italian owner via a long-term hire agreement, who continues to drive it in Italy.
Italian legislation introduced in 2022 prohibited persons resident in Italy from driving a foreign-registered vehicle on a permanent basis without re-registration. The exception applies to hire vehicles, and it is precisely this loophole that is exploited for the Naples trick. With a hire agreement in the glove compartment, the whole arrangement remains legal on paper.
The Guardia di Finanza case
As Automoto documented in its reconstruction of the case, the Italian financial police, the Guardia di Finanza , intercepted a parcel from Poland at a distribution centre near Naples in October 2024. Inside were 21 Polish number plates, 14 registration certificates and six purchase contracts. The recipient was a vehicle registration agency in Naples. The person responsible was investigated for fraud and handling stolen goods. The vehicles in question had never left Italy. On paper, they had been transferred to Poland; in reality, they continued to be parked and driven in Campania.
Further figures illustrate the scale of the phenomenon. As Cronache della Campania reports, in 2025 a total of 5,364 road accidents involving Polish-registered vehicles were recorded in the province of Naples, more than half the national Italian figure for vehicles with Polish number plates. In nearly half of these accidents, specifically in 2,263 cases, the Polish Green Card ultimately provided no valid insurance cover. In such instances, the Italian guarantee fund for road accident victims steps in and subsequently seeks reimbursement from its Polish counterpart, PBUK.
What Poland is doing about it
It is precisely these costs that have prompted Poland to take action. Between 2021 and 2025, the number of claims settled by PBUK arising from Italy increased almost seventeenfold, and payouts for damage caused by uninsured vehicles with Polish number plates abroad reached around 9.7 million euros in 2025. The Polish government has initiated 500 legal proceedings with a total value of 80 million euros in damages claims. In addition, the technical inspection system is being reformed: photographs are to document the vehicle's actual presence in Poland at every inspection, and vehicles without valid insurance or a valid inspection are to be automatically removed from the register. Since 2026, the district prosecutor's office in Opole, in southern Poland, has been investigating four vehicle inspectors for fictitious technical inspections, with more than 400 registrations being reviewed.
As the specialist portal Intermediachannel notes in a recent piece, the first signs are now visible in Naples that the trick is shifting further: alongside Polish plates, Czech and Bulgarian number plates are increasingly appearing in the urban landscape, a sign that the business adapts to tightened regulations more quickly than the regulations themselves.
What this means for travellers to Italy
For travellers from German-speaking countries travelling through Italy in their own car and venturing as far south as Campania, the phenomenon changes very little in practical terms. The Polish number plates are simply part of the visual reality of Naples and Campania, with no Polish migration wave behind them. Anyone who is involved in an accident in Italy with a Polish-registered vehicle should, however, expect the claims process to take longer, potentially running via the Italian guarantee fund and the Polish PBUK.
A quick check of the vehicle documents of the other party involved in the accident, in particular the validity of the Green Card, can make a significant difference to how smoothly things proceed afterwards. For the many Italian motorists who continue to pay high premiums honestly in Naples, the Naples trick remains a double source of frustration: they share in the costs, while the cheaper Polish option appears to sidestep those same costs with ease.
